Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The following is from Ghost Coast Studios, the world's first and only podcast network.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Now wait a minute. Now wait a minute.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: Welcome to a special crossover episode of the most important election of our lives. And we're teaming up with Worst week yet, who's basically our sister show Deanna steps in and talks about the world of Stardew Valley. Maybe you're a person that played this game a whole lot during the pandemic, or you are like me and you did not play it at all. This will still be a good episode for you.
[00:00:32] Speaker D: Honestly, it's.
[00:00:33] Speaker C: It's a video game about fishing. It's not that complicated. And you'll see the culture of Stardew Valley like, like watching a YouTube video for a game that you don't really play. It's just great. And at the center of it, you meet the very lazy do nothing mayor of this town, Mayor Lewis. And he's a hands off guy. And you'll wonder whether he's a good escape from the real world or, I don't know, maybe you'd like to have a little bit more of the real world in here. You'll also see a cabinet filled with marriageable characters and a lot of interesting, quirky characters from history. Get your overalls, get your pitchforks. Let's dig. Let's dig in here. This is the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: This election, which will be, I do truly believe, the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: This is the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:29] Speaker E: This is the most important election. Don't you?
[00:01:32] Speaker F: You hear that?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: This is the most important election in our lifetime.
[00:01:37] Speaker E: I certainly think it's the most important.
[00:01:38] Speaker F: Election of my lifetime.
[00:01:40] Speaker E: This is the most important election of our times.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Politicians say every time.
[00:01:46] Speaker D: This is the most important election. This one's really that important.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Whoa. Breaking for the viewers at home, we, about an hour, maybe an hour and a half ago, just got hit with the first announcement of the first Trump tariff.
[00:02:01] Speaker D: Woohoo.
[00:02:02] Speaker E: Yeah. Tariff time. They're coming for your coffee.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah, Colombian coffee.
[00:02:08] Speaker F: Wait, what's the tariff? I don't know. I was at like a children's cello recital.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: It's a tariff on Colombia, on stuff from Colombia, which the country of Colombia, which is probably because they were rejecting deportation flights from Trump.
[00:02:27] Speaker E: Okay, but what if it was a tariff on the District of Columbia?
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Oh, really? Makes you think, what if it was.
[00:02:34] Speaker D: A tariff on Columbia University?
[00:02:38] Speaker B: What if they did a tariff on Christmas?
[00:02:40] Speaker E: You know what? They know what they did, Andrew.
[00:02:42] Speaker D: What?
[00:02:43] Speaker B: What if they did a terrifying Christopher Columbus's Ghost.
[00:02:47] Speaker D: What if they did a tariff on Columbia Pictures?
[00:02:54] Speaker E: Tariff on the ghost of the Columbia.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: As the local statistician, I've done an in depth analysis on this and unfortunately, big line's going to go down. Oh, no, it's going to go down.
[00:03:13] Speaker E: I don't like that.
[00:03:14] Speaker F: I don't feel good about that at all, actually.
[00:03:17] Speaker E: I think there's something we can do.
[00:03:19] Speaker D: That picture.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Can we do Kennedy?
[00:03:21] Speaker E: Well, we could send Trump that picture. That might help.
I agree with Brandon here.
[00:03:28] Speaker D: You're going to really get your message across to him.
[00:03:31] Speaker F: I think that that's the kind of graph that Trump could understand. Look, I think that even he could have understood that's the problem.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: He had the graph upside down when he was considering tariffs, so it looked.
[00:03:45] Speaker D: Like it was so much. Really? This means that all of this situation is your fault?
[00:03:51] Speaker F: Yes.
Wait, is that like during COVID when the governor of Georgia intentionally, like misconstrued data on a chart to make it look like something very different was happening than what was actually happening? Like he plotted data out of order to make it look like there was a downward trend, but actually it was an upward trend.
[00:04:18] Speaker D: That sounds like exactly something Brian Kemp would do. You haven't shocked me at all.
[00:04:25] Speaker E: Yeah, Brandon lives in Brian Kemp.
[00:04:27] Speaker D: I've known this guy for years. Flipping graphs and charts upside down is big line of business over there in Kemp world.
[00:04:36] Speaker F: Wow.
[00:04:37] Speaker E: Well, there's one other thing we can do about the problems that we're facing. We do have another option here in front of us and that is, of course, change our vote. Vote right now. Vote every day. You've got to vote right this minute. It's the most important election of our lives and you've got to vote.
[00:04:57] Speaker F: I already voted like four times today. Was that not enough.
[00:05:03] Speaker E: Rookie numbers?
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Breaking news. Democracy just died because you didn't vote enough today.
[00:05:09] Speaker E: Yeah, when they voted four times since this podcast started.
[00:05:12] Speaker F: When they say democracy now, they mean you should always be voting.
[00:05:17] Speaker E: Yes.
So here in the polling booth today, we've got myself, of course, Kennedy Cooper. We've also got Brandon Buchanan on the panel, as always. We've got Andrew Fields, our in house statistician. And we've got our guest today joining us in the polling booth. Got your voter registration ready to go? We've already looked at it and tampered with it. We've got Deanna, my good friend and co host from the worst week yet.
[00:05:47] Speaker F: Hey, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me. I can't stop thinking about how much voting I Could be doing instead of making a podcast. But I'll just.
[00:05:59] Speaker E: You're voting by being here.
[00:06:01] Speaker F: Ah, okay, great. So my voting is covered. My voting obligation for now is covered.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: When I'm looking off screen, I'm filling these out.
[00:06:08] Speaker D: So I see your civic responsibilities just for the time of this show's broadcasting are being completely filled.
[00:06:17] Speaker F: Incredible. I'm so glad. What a relief.
[00:06:19] Speaker E: Yeah. And all you listeners right now, you know you're voting too, and tell your friends to vote by listening to this show.
[00:06:26] Speaker D: No, no, no. That's just pass that you're not a real participant in the system until you've reviewed on itunes.
[00:06:33] Speaker E: Well, you get more votes is the thing. It's like you get one vote. If you just listen, you review on iTunes, you get five votes. All right.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Sounds like something.
You get one vote normally, but if you rate me with five stars, you get five votes.
[00:06:49] Speaker E: Yeah, that's. That's exactly. That's Trump. Trump already rolled. That was one of the executive orders that Trump signed on day one.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:06:57] Speaker E: Was that five stars? Five votes.
[00:07:01] Speaker F: If you vote against Trump, you get one vote. But if you're voting for Trump, you get five votes.
[00:07:08] Speaker D: Think about. Yeah, think about, you know, your Uber driver and all the people, your instacart deliverer who brings you your mint chocolate ice cream. All these people you give five stars to. And you definitely have never laughed at those people even once. They've only brought you the food that you depend on to live. But we recorded a podcast.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: What is podcast but food for the mind?
[00:07:34] Speaker F: Compelling.
[00:07:35] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:07:36] Speaker F: Compelling and rich.
[00:07:38] Speaker E: Made me think a lot.
I don't have a good segue for this. Deanna, you're a big fan of Stardew Valley.
[00:07:46] Speaker D: When you're busy being a treatler and getting your instacart to go there and your policing the actions and honestly, Stardew Valley is a great side dish to having something delivered to you.
[00:08:00] Speaker E: Yeah. You know who else had some stuff delivered to them? The. The residents of Stardew Valley. When you play the game, they're always be like sending you a letter in the mail. Like, hey, you got some cabbage?
[00:08:11] Speaker F: I feel like they send me letters in the mail to send me stuff.
[00:08:16] Speaker E: Well, that too. They'll be like, hey, I found this extra spoon. Spoon in the cupboard.
[00:08:21] Speaker F: It's crazy to me how Kent will just be like mailing bombs.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: I haven't played Stardew Valley, so.
[00:08:35] Speaker E: Okay, Kent. Kent is ex military and just be putting bombs in the mail.
[00:08:42] Speaker F: Kent also has like crazy ptsd.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Oh, good relatable.
[00:08:49] Speaker F: And they just slide that right in there.
[00:08:52] Speaker E: Yeah. People always forget about this, but behind the scenes of Stardew Valley, the lore is there's like a war going on. But, like, this place is unaffected by it. But, like, there is like a war going on.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Okay, Kennedy, do you remember how behind the scenes we've sometimes talked about Sonic and it sounds incomprehensible to you? Yeah, that's what I'm feeling right now.
[00:09:16] Speaker F: Well, you're in luck, because I can explain.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Good.
[00:09:21] Speaker E: Sorry, you're an expert.
[00:09:24] Speaker D: Yeah. No, really, go do it. Tell us about Stardew Valley. Because, you know, I've watched a couple of youtubes as I often do for niche hobbies, but I don't want to pretend people will think of me as a totally different person if they think I've got 100 hours in Stardew.
[00:09:45] Speaker F: I have over 250 hours on more than one save file. Like not 250 combined, but like SEP it two separate over. Over 500 total.
[00:10:05] Speaker D: So the first question that's got to be what? Why would a person need to reroll in Stardew? Are there different builds? Are there? Why? Why would you need more than one save file in Stardew Valley? And if you're not watching this, Deanna cleared their throat, leaned backwards like, get ready.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: It's about to go down more like Star Dome Valley.
[00:10:32] Speaker F: So I, I started again because I felt like there was a long portion of time at the beginning of the game where I. I didn't understand a lot of things. There's not really, like, tutorials in Stardew Valley. And one thing that I dislike about my own life is that I cannot go back to the beginning and do it all over again, applying the information that I have now. So in a video game where that's very much an option, I'm always going to go back and, and run it back from the beginning, but perfect, no mistakes.
[00:11:14] Speaker D: Is this, Is this, like, do have any of y'all played the Persona games? Is this something where. Where you've got. You've got certain relationships and you've got to give this guy the carrot cake by September 30th and you'll unlock the new layer of friendship and it's kind.
[00:11:30] Speaker E: Of less time constrainty than Persona and.
[00:11:34] Speaker F: It'S not that deep?
[00:11:35] Speaker E: Okay, yeah, it's not as deep, but there are still aspects to, like, if you can accomplish certain things by certain times, it's better. But I think the main thing, because I've restarted in Stardew Valley, A couple of times. I think the main thing is just like certain end gamey kind of like farm layout stuff can be frustrating if you don't plan for it to some extent.
[00:12:01] Speaker F: And yeah, it gets hard to move stuff around. So basically, Stardew Valley, the situation is that your grandpa died and you work at in a cube job at a place called Joja Corporation.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Whoa, is this a JoJo reference?
[00:12:21] Speaker F: Joja?
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Oh, dang it.
[00:12:24] Speaker F: And it sucks there and your soul is being sucked out through your feet and you decide you're sick of it. So you open up this letter from your dead grandpa and he's like, hey, you inherited my farm. So you bail out of your job in your Joja cube and you go to Pelican Town, which is your town in Stardew Valley, and you go to your grandfather's farm that is now your farm, and you discover that was once a thriving town is now being crushed by the existence of what, you guessed it, Joja Mart, which is like a Walmart.
And there's a community center center in Pelican Town that has fallen into disrepair. And so in order to save the town, you have to revitalize the community center and then run jojamart out of there. That's the storyline I always play. There's also a storyline that you can play that is pro jojamart, but like.
[00:13:35] Speaker E: I tried it once and it's incredibly unsatisfying.
[00:13:38] Speaker F: Yeah, the girlies aren't really doing that because the whole point of the thing is that to revitalize the community center, you have to donate specific things to the community center and, and you complete these bundles and then when the bundle is complete, you get back a reward that helps you to advance your farm or you like get crafting recipes or all these different rewards. But it really is like some of the stuff that you need to be able to complete the community center. You can most easily obtain it by building friendships with other people in the town. So really, essentially it is you move to this town to try to escape your boring, awful corporate job. You get to this town and find out that that same corporation is trying to wreck up your Pap Paps town. And now you're going to build community with the girls, build up your farm, save the town, revitalize the community center, and then you're just kicking it after that. Honestly, you're farming. You could do mining. There's an island called Ginger Island. You could be doing Ginger island stuff. You could go to the desert. There's like places. Very cute.
[00:14:54] Speaker E: It's A great game.
[00:14:55] Speaker F: Yeah. Really cute.
[00:14:57] Speaker E: Yeah. And also, of course, you can marry a variety of characters, which we'll be talking about more. Brandon, though, you sound like you had something.
[00:15:05] Speaker D: Yeah. Just. What's the gameplay loop here? Like? I've seen clips of it looking. While there's lots of different games and stuff inside of it, of course there's kind of a Legend of Zelda component. I saw hit points, I saw spinning around. I saw.
Yeah. Is there. What's the gameplay like of Stardew Valley?
[00:15:28] Speaker F: Nowhere near as involved as even, Even if you reach back into the, like into the Zelda history books. Like, Ocarina of time is 94 times more complicated than Stardew Valley. And Ocarina of Time is one of my favorite games ever.
[00:15:50] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. There's. There's fishing, there's collecting.
Just. Do you feel like you're getting new experiences or what is the, the, the loop like?
[00:16:03] Speaker E: I mean, I think a lot of it is like, it's, it's all these things kind of feeding together. It's the idea of restoring Grandpa's farm. Like, spoiler alert for a game that's now like a decade old. But Grandpa comes to visit you as a ghost after your third year of farming.
And, and he judges how well you've been restoring the farm. And then based on that or after. When's the first time he comes back to visit you? Is it after year one?
[00:16:36] Speaker F: He comes the first time after year three.
[00:16:39] Speaker E: Okay. And then he'll come again later, potentially depending on how you've done. So, like, if you, if he wasn't totally satisfied, he'll come back again later and check on you again. And the, the fun thing is like, even if you don't do things right, eventually Grandpa will come back as a ghost after a certain number of times, I think like the third time or something. And he'll be like, you know what, I gave it some thought. I don't care if you're doing things the way that I want. I'm just glad you're happy.
[00:17:14] Speaker D: That's sweet.
Big, big spoilers for starting Valley.
[00:17:19] Speaker F: So the game, the game operates on a 28 day month and each day starts at 6:00am and you have to till 2:00 in the morning that day to do whatever it is that you're gonna do that day. And then each month represents one season of the year. Spring, summer, fall, winter. There's different crops that grow in different seasons. There's different fish that are available in different seasons.
[00:17:49] Speaker E: Even mining is slightly seasonal.
[00:17:51] Speaker F: Yeah. So things Change seasonally. It's once you complete the main storyline of. Com of the community center. There's not really like much story after that. Like it's kind of. I continue playing it because one, I'm compulsive and two, it's very soothing. And three, I like to do a little bit of like passive mat. I like. I like a little math in my life. So I like spending time calculating like oh, if I have this many farmable tiles on my.
On my farm landscape. And a Joja or sorry, a Junimo hut covers this many tiles around it. And each sprinkler can water X number of tiles automatically. Here's how I can maximize my farm. This crop grows at this rate and yields this profitability. Like I do all that. I like that also.
[00:18:54] Speaker E: I mean there is. It's not as deep as like the main game, but like there is decent end game content now with all the updates that have come. Yeah, that makes it feel rewarding to keep going.
[00:19:05] Speaker F: In 1.6 there's a lot more.
[00:19:07] Speaker E: Yeah. So like, you know, initially like when the game first came out, like when I first played it, it was like, you know, you got to the end of year three and it's like, okay, I guess I'm done, you know. But now it's like you have a lot of reason to keep going and see. See a bit more of the game. So that's. That's a fun aspect too, is it rewards you. If you're just vibing, enjoying your farm, the game rewards you for just continuing to do that by having some interesting endgame stuff that you can explore for a while.
So, you know, what we looked into today to get ready for this show is, you know, there's also. Farming is something that happens in the real world. You may or may not have heard of this. It is not just an activity in the video game Stardew Valley. Looking into it and interestingly enough, there have been a few politicians with special relationships to farming that we wanted to highlight as a part of today's episode.
So of course at the top of the list, you gotta know before we even say it that we're talking about Mr. Jimmy Carter today. Rest in pepperonis.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Resting pepperonis.
[00:20:29] Speaker F: Jimmy Carter Rest in pepperoni. Sounds like you are gonna grind up Jimmy Carter's decomposing corpse and turn it into pepperoni.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: I would like to take back my previous song.
[00:20:42] Speaker D: If you've read. If you've read Kennedy's Blue sky account, you may not be too far off.
[00:20:48] Speaker F: You know, I try to stay off social media because I generally think it's bad.
[00:20:54] Speaker E: You know, that's wise.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:56] Speaker D: Yeah. I don't think there's anybody in the whole world that would say, don't do that.
You should tweet more right now.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: You should. You should vote on Twitter by tweeting, sorry, everything X the Everything app. You can now vote on it.
[00:21:13] Speaker F: I just, you know, the world is bad enough, and I don't have to view it through the dirty gym sock of 80 million other people's opinions.
[00:21:24] Speaker D: That's actually a hard case.
The dirty gym sock of 80 million people's opinions is just great.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Like, if. If we were on social media, I'd respond to you saying that with that, Jeff, and I do pronounce it Jeff. Of somebody writing down and it burning up. Because that was fire.
[00:21:48] Speaker D: Yeah. But also, I'm sure someone would have some gifts of saying, I'm. You know, I ain't read all that, though, sometimes. Yeah.
[00:21:59] Speaker F: I am known to drop a zinger from time to time. Okay, so Jimmy Carter had. Jimmy Carter was farming. Now he's pepperoni. What else you got?
[00:22:07] Speaker E: Yeah, he was. He was. He. You know, he had his infamous peanut farm.
[00:22:12] Speaker D: Kennedy. Would. Would Jimmy Carter be a good marriageable option on. On Stardew Valley?
[00:22:18] Speaker E: You think he's a little. Well, what era of Jimmy? Like, you know, he's a little dead for it right now.
[00:22:27] Speaker D: I think you'd be getting a composite. He'd be a former Navy guy. He'd be building houses. I think you just get a.
[00:22:36] Speaker E: And he's.
He's. He could be, like, maybe like, 40ish.
[00:22:41] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:44] Speaker E: 38Ish.
[00:22:47] Speaker F: I'd say no. And here's why. Is because, like, your spouse in Stardew Valley doesn't actually do anything. They're not a real contributor to the household. It's like they just move in and then are doing their own thing. And you are also there. And I don't think that Jimmy Carter deserves the fruits of my personal labor.
Like, I didn't do all this and revitalize this whole. I've done enough for you, Jimmy. Enjoy the fucking town I rebuilt for you and get off my land.
[00:23:23] Speaker E: In Stardew Valley, there's a carpenter, Robin, who you hire to build stuff around your farm. And my envisioning of if Jimmy Carter was in Stardew Valley is that he would also offer to build stuff on your farm for free. And at first, this would seem really cool, but then you start to realize he's driving Robin out of business if you keep taking him up.
[00:23:51] Speaker F: Yes, that.
[00:23:52] Speaker E: That's.
[00:23:52] Speaker D: That.
[00:23:53] Speaker E: That feels like the vibe of Jimmy Carter to me. So he wouldn't be a marriage candidate. He would be a post endgame villain.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: That'S going to get.
[00:24:05] Speaker E: After you defeated Jojamar. You've got to defeat sweet old man Jimmy Carter, who's actually a piece of.
[00:24:12] Speaker F: But. But okay, hear me out, because.
[00:24:15] Speaker E: And who killed people in Nicaragua.
[00:24:17] Speaker F: Here's. Here's my thing, though, is, like, if he was driving business out of business because he was destroying the need for business by trying to make everything free, I could support that. Like.
[00:24:30] Speaker E: No, he's just. He's just specifically wrecking Robin's.
[00:24:35] Speaker F: Yeah, and that sucks because, like, Robin's doing a lot. Also, Robin's husband and Robin's daughter are the only people of color in Stardew Valley.
[00:24:46] Speaker E: Oh, really makes you think about what Jimmy Carter's, you know, personal race politics are.
[00:24:53] Speaker F: Right?
[00:24:53] Speaker E: He would do that.
[00:24:54] Speaker F: That he's now making a target out of this woman in an interracial marriage problematic.
[00:25:01] Speaker E: Problematic.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: I can't believe Jimmy Carter would do that.
[00:25:03] Speaker F: I can.
[00:25:04] Speaker E: I. I can actually totally believe that.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Okay, you know what? I changed my stance. Voting matter.
[00:25:10] Speaker E: His. His beloved family farm was in Georgia. All right, Consider that. All right.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Okay, I'm using my brain now. Yes, he totally would do that.
[00:25:20] Speaker D: Let's talk about someone else.
[00:25:25] Speaker F: She say, let's talk about someone else. Yeah, let's talk about something.
[00:25:30] Speaker E: We also got Dan Osborne. Now, this guy, he's a little more obscure.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: He. If anybody recognizes his name, it's because he ran the past year. If you heard about an independent that actually had a shot in Nebraska, it was Dan Osborne. He. His opinions are mostly Democrat leaning, but.
[00:25:56] Speaker D: It'S so funny that you have to take on so many gimmicks. Can I read you guys a paragraph of this guy? And you'll say, this is what you have to do to run for Congress and not be a Republican. All right, so Dan Osborne is a US Navy veteran industrial mechanic, former labor union leader, and independent politician. He served in the Nebraska Army National Guard before working at Kellogg's Omaha plant. This sounds like a guy. Do you remember that one guy who was a Navy SEAL and a firefighter and an astronaut? This sounds like that guy.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: And let me make one thing perfectly clear. If you remember that there was a Kellogg strike a few years ago, guess who was leading the strike?
[00:26:47] Speaker D: Little man.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: I like to call Dan a little.
[00:26:50] Speaker E: A little fella.
[00:26:52] Speaker F: Imagine doing all that and your name is just Dan.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker D: That's probably what inspired that whole thing, you know?
[00:27:01] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:27:02] Speaker D: Maybe it's like a Boy named Sue. It's a man named Dan. It's like, I gotta go do all this stuff because otherwise nobody's gonna pay me any attention at all.
[00:27:11] Speaker F: He was like, people are calling me Dan the Man and, you know, I really don't feel like I'm the man. I have to go and actualize myself as the man. I gotta be the man.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: And a lot of his.
[00:27:25] Speaker E: Even though he lost, he. His campaign is being studied now because it was unusually competitive in a deep red area compared to a lot of Democrats who got curb fucking stomped.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: He had a. He was a very creative person with how he worded some of his normally Democratic party views. Like he fully supported $15 minimum wage throughout the country. And his explanation.
Nebraska has a $15 minimum wage. We can't compete unless we force everybody else to have the same, so let's force them all to have that same minimum wage increase.
On abortion. He was very much, well, we know outlawing abortion doesn't actually decrease it. I would prefer to help women raise children so they choose to not make abortion. His biggest campaign thing was right to repair on farming equipment. Like he was going straight after John Deere. And like, right to repair is something that Biden was big on. But if you want anything that could get Republicans interested, they frickin hate John Deere.
[00:28:39] Speaker F: Wow.
[00:28:40] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:28:41] Speaker F: I don't know a lot about this person, but I could see, I could see it working in the same way where like, Bernie Sanders was just putting forth populist policies and was like trying also to create some separation between himself and the Democratic Party as a whole. And I think that's a big thing because there are a lot of people who, like, they'll agree with something when a Republican says it, but a Democrat could say the same exact thing and they would disagree just because the person who said it was a Democrat. Like even thinking about like this stupid fucking TikTok ban bullshit like that originally was Trump. Yes, that was Trump's idea. And then Biden picked it up. And because Biden then carried it through, then Trump had to be like, no, I don't like that idea. And these people have just waffled along with it based on who was saying it and who wasn't saying it. So I think that someone being an independent can leverage a little bit of that.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Osborne refused the endorsement of the Nebraska Democrat Party. He refused it because he did not want that connection.
One of his advertisements and this was the anger he was really trying to get at, was a TV was playing with one of his opponents, Deb Fisher's advertisements that were just telling lies about him. And he was like, do you see all that lying politicians are doing? This is why nobody likes politics. And then he puts on some of his industrial gear and put the torches to the TV to put the word lie. Saying, doesn't this make you want to cut your TV in half?
Like, if there's any political advertisement that really hits my soul, it's politics is so bad you want to destroy your tv. And then he proceeds to destroy his tv.
[00:30:37] Speaker E: That's a vibe.
[00:30:39] Speaker F: That is a vibe. I mean, again, I can see it working because Donald Trump has gained a lot of traction with people by talking about how like the establishment was and all of his, like, drain the swamp. We don't need a career politician, we need an outsider. The problem was that he was just cosplaying as an outsider and has always been an insider. Where it sounds like this person was actually an outsider. So good on, he was legit.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: He's been an independent his whole life. And like a lot of people call, call him a demon disguise. I honestly think he just hated the two party system. I think he just wanted to cut an axe into it.
[00:31:20] Speaker F: Well, the other thing I could see there is when we watch other politicians who have like a real grassroots rise, like aoc.
The minute that she started taking endorsements from the Democratic. But she just belonged to them.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:31:39] Speaker F: And she lost everything. That was her.
She lost what made her excellent because she became a pawn of the Democratic Party because after they helped her gain anything, I'm sure that they were like, and now you have to do this for us. It's like the debt, she'll never be done paying. So good for Dan. Dan the man. I. You know what? You did earn it, Dan.
[00:32:08] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, the Democrats, the thing about them is that they are just obsessed with being like six years behind on messaging. They're always agreeing with whatever the Republicans were saying like six years ago and trying to catch up with it. And they're always surprised when the Republicans are like, actually we didn't mean that at all. And words don't mean anything. And they always are just going, what for an extra couple of years? It's like watching something on the Cartoon Network.
[00:32:42] Speaker E: Now to, to, you know, the easier thing to do, of course, is to reach into the past. And I've got a couple of folks, we'll spend less time talking about them right now. But I Just want to quickly make note of William Jennings Bryan.
Who. Andrew, maybe you can fill in a few details there. But this guy, he was the Secretary of State, and then he ran for president, but it didn't go.
[00:33:06] Speaker B: It turns out we were using the gold standard, but he was like. He made his career by making a famous cross of gold speech that was like, actually, we should use gold and silver as a. As our standard.
[00:33:21] Speaker D: And farmers don't have gold.
Economic system.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah, the. The farmers. The farmers. They don't. The poor farmers. It was. It was a big thing for him. He contradicted other mainstream. But it just destroyed the economy.
[00:33:40] Speaker E: Yeah, good, good, good times for this guy.
And then also President Martin Van Buren, perhaps one of the more important farmers in office. He was a bit of a gentleman farmer, not necessarily getting his hands dirty as much, per se.
[00:34:03] Speaker D: When you say gentleman farmer, I say how many slaves?
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Wow, you're right. You're not out of line. And you're right.
[00:34:14] Speaker E: Yeah, you are. You are 100. Right? Uh, and yeah, so he was. He was not getting his hands dirty a lot, but he spent a lot of time bucking around on his farm and telling unpaid black folks what to do and probably torturing them.
So, you know, Martin Van Buren, he gets. He gets a pass into Farmer World.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: You're tuned in to Ghost Coast Studios, the world's first and only podcast network built for creators, activists, and entrepreneurs with something to say. Gripping audio documentaries, conversations that spark change. We're here to bring your ideas to life. Ready for more? Head to Ghostcoast Video for shows that matter, tools to help you create, and a community that's totally redefining what a podcast network can be. Ghost Coast Studios, meet your dreams.
[00:35:13] Speaker E: Now, I would like. Are you all ready to vote? Do you have your ballots in front of you? Because it is time to vote in our first election of the episode. I am talking, of course, about a presidential election between Mr. Martin Van Buren himself, who we just mentioned, and Mayor Lewis.
Wow.
Well, Mayor Lewis has held office, if you remember.
[00:35:43] Speaker D: I. When. When we first started this show, I. I had made a joke about Martin Van Buren. I was just saying a random name. And I said, you know, by, like, episode 50, we're going to be doing Martin Van Buren versus Sonic the Hedgehog. And here we are.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Oh, Sonic would definitely win. No question to ask. No, Louis.
[00:36:11] Speaker E: Mayor Lewis also, suspiciously, might be racist.
[00:36:15] Speaker F: I. Yeah, you know, I think Mayor Lewis, he's kind of a sham.
[00:36:22] Speaker E: Kind of a sham.
[00:36:23] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:36:24] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:36:25] Speaker F: First of all, there's never an election.
There is Never an election in Stardew Valley. He's the mayor when you get there. And he's always the fucking mayor. And he doesn't even have a first name. You don't even learn his first name. His character is just Mayor Lewis. I think his first name is just Mayor. And he showed up in this town and was like, hi, I'm Mayor Lewis. And they thought that he was the mayor, and he just let them believe it for years.
[00:36:56] Speaker E: Okay, but to be fair, if everyone fell for that, that's on them, maybe.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Are you saying that Stardew Valley needs to vote more often?
[00:37:08] Speaker E: I. I think I'm saying they need.
[00:37:09] Speaker F: To vote at all. They are not doing that right now.
[00:37:13] Speaker E: Okay, but consider this before you. Okay, yes, Mayor Lewis, definitely corrupt, probably racist, not a good guy. But Martin Van Buren, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, you know, went to a relatively prestigious university, and then he and his brother founded a law firm, and then they made a bunch of money. And then he was like, all right, I've. I've got that big law for money. I'm going into politics. You know? And he rocketed up the ladder in politics pretty fast. You know, he didn't have a. He didn't work for it in the way that some people do to get to the office of presidency. You know what I'm saying?
[00:37:57] Speaker D: So third party, I guess the second party is already quite a lot for Stardew Valley. They said, all right, we will give you a vote, and this is your choice.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Here's North Korea.
[00:38:09] Speaker F: Here's the thing. I think Mayor Lewis is a great example of there is no perfect politician.
And Mayor Lewis is a great example of we voted for this person, and now we have to hold him accountable. That's all. I think he's. Let me tell you. Let me say more. May I?
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:33] Speaker F: Okay, great. Thanks for inviting me onto your yap trap and then letting me yap. I really do appreciate that.
Okay. Mayor Lewis, he had no problem and ran no resistance to any of the stuff I was doing in the community center. I. I bulldozed the JoJo Mart and built a movie theater there. And Mayor Lewis had no qualms. I just think he's a do nothing. But on the other hand, I also appreciate that he lets the community do for its own. He doesn't get in the way out of, like, selfish desires. I just think he's a mediocre white dude, and now he's the mayor of this town. Yeah, I do appreciate that. Mayor Lewis never tried to conspire with the Jojamart people to over the town for his own advancement.
[00:39:28] Speaker E: See, Martin Van Buren would definitely conspire with Joe Jamari.
[00:39:31] Speaker F: Martin Van Buren. Like, I'm voting for Mayor Lewis. I'm just saying, vote no matter who is. Yeah, Lewis, no matter who is. You got it. Yeah. Like, his girlfriend is Marnie, this farmer.
[00:39:47] Speaker E: Keep in mind, at this point, we're imag. Okay, I didn't specify this. I'm sorry. This is in 1836, when Martin Van Buren was running for office. So, you know, you can. Yeah.
[00:39:59] Speaker D: You didn't introduce a time machine into this until late in the discussion.
[00:40:03] Speaker E: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We'll do another era as well, but we're doing. We're doing 1836, when Martin Van Buren ran for office. So Mayor Lewis, back in 1836, I think. I think he could do well back then.
[00:40:18] Speaker F: I think so. And also I think that he would be like. I think he is probably marginally racist now and would be more racist back then, but definitely nowhere near as racist as Martin Van Buren. Like, leagues. Like, nowhere near.
[00:40:36] Speaker E: Yeah. In fact, he might lose because he's not racist enough for 1830.
[00:40:40] Speaker F: He would be like, well, Martin.
Never mind.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Yeah, please don't.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: That's.
[00:40:48] Speaker E: That's what he would just say, well, Martin. And then you'd have a Joe Biden moment.
[00:40:53] Speaker F: Yeah. Martin Van Buren would criticize Mayor Lewis for having two black people living in his town.
[00:41:03] Speaker E: Okay, what if they're. What if they're running against each other in 2016? I think Mayor Lewis wins.
[00:41:09] Speaker F: In modern times, I think Mayor Lewis always wins.
[00:41:14] Speaker E: You think he always wins?
[00:41:15] Speaker F: Or I guess maybe not always wins, but, like, I'm. You know what, Louis? No matter who is Lennis, no matter when is. I don't know. I'm voting. I. I'm always going to be voting for him.
[00:41:29] Speaker E: Okay. Okay.
[00:41:31] Speaker F: I can't imagine a time in which I, my own self would be a Martin Van Buren voter.
Like, I'm. I'm a burned at the stake girly. I'm a lobotomized girly. Whatever they were doing to women who say that things like racism is the. Is the underwire in the bra that holds up America's culture. Like, whatever they would do to women who said stuff like that throughout time in history is what they would have done to me, and Martin Van Buren would have liked all of it.
[00:42:06] Speaker E: What about Mayor Lewis vs. Jimmy Carter?
[00:42:11] Speaker F: Same guy. Basic same guy.
[00:42:14] Speaker E: Right. That's why it's. It's tough. Right.
[00:42:18] Speaker D: First of all, Deanna History's not over yet.
[00:42:23] Speaker E: So 1976, we've come ahead 140 years.
Mayor Lewis running against Jimmy Carter for President of the United States. They well for Democratic primary most like and I don't think do you think Mayor Lewis would run out as a Republican? I think he'd run as a Democrat in the 70s.
[00:42:44] Speaker F: Uhuh. You know what I think? I think Mayor Lewis is. You know what I think he's a you know what from you know where a Libertarian.
[00:43:00] Speaker E: Mayor Lewis as the third party spoiler in 1976.
[00:43:05] Speaker F: From the, from the land of the barely legal comes Mayor Lewis.
Stardew Valley means something else to him.
[00:43:14] Speaker D: The resident I'm gonna start, I'm gonna.
[00:43:17] Speaker F: Start referring to my is Stardew Valley.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Vote Lewis, no matter who is.
[00:43:28] Speaker D: I mean it seems like the citizens of Stardew Valley are more or less happy and if they're not, they're not.
[00:43:34] Speaker E: There are complaints about Mayor Lewis though.
[00:43:37] Speaker F: And as I was starting to say, he is playing in my girl Marnie's face. Because Mayor Lewis is single and Marnie is single and they are both older people, there is no reason why they could not be just in a relationship outright.
[00:43:59] Speaker E: Yeah, he, he do be playing with the, with the women.
[00:44:02] Speaker F: And then he left his dang drawers at her house. He left his purple undies at her house and then asked me to go and get them. The second quest in the game Stardew Valley is you have to go find Mayor Lewis's underwear which are in Marnie's room, which you have to have at least two heart level friendship with Marnie to be able to get in her room and get these underpants.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: Kennedy, I hope you know after this is over, I'm going to give you like five very weird sonic facts that will make you wonder what the hell just for revenge.
[00:44:46] Speaker E: Just for having to learn about Stardew Valley. Wow.
It's a great game.
[00:44:53] Speaker F: Kennedy, I'm so sorry that I have done such a poor job of both over and under explaining Stardew Valley that now you have to get punishment.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: No.
[00:45:11] Speaker E: Being a podcaster, it ain't easy. There's casualties.
[00:45:15] Speaker F: Do you want to give us the five sonic facts now? Like I feel like I should have to hear them because this is all my fault.
[00:45:21] Speaker E: You got five sonic facts off the top of your head?
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Off the top of my head. Just the only one I could think of is the final boss fight in Sonic Adventure 2 is a giant lizard in space dragging an ark to the earth, which is actually the prototype version of Shadow the hedgehog. And you have to. The two. Sonic and Shadow have to team up to beat the giant space lizard. That's the only one.
[00:45:41] Speaker E: I don't like that.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the one you get in the movie.
[00:45:46] Speaker E: All right, so they should put that in the movie.
[00:45:48] Speaker F: So Mayor Lewis is a Libertarian, so.
[00:45:51] Speaker E: He loses the Jimmy Carter, I guess.
[00:45:53] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:45:54] Speaker E: Anyone disagree with that?
[00:45:56] Speaker D: No, I will say that I'm. I'm just. I'm always fascinated by these, like. Yeah, I love getting too much and not enough information about a niche hobby.
[00:46:05] Speaker F: So do I. Please just love it when I. I'm a hairdresser. When someone sits down and starts talking about something and I don't know, and they start explaining it and I'm just imagining the information that goes in the gaps of what they're telling me.
I love it.
[00:46:23] Speaker E: All right, so Mayor Lewis has won the presidency. Not in the Jimmy Carter election, but just in general. In our new. In our new scenario here, we agreed he'd win against Martin Van Buren. So it's possible he could be the president.
Mayor Lewis is the President of the United States is not a huge stretch, to be honest.
And so we're imagining now that Mayor Lewis is. Wait, are you going to disagree with me?
[00:46:49] Speaker F: No, I was just going to say, in a scenario where literally everyone else that's ever been involved in politics is dead or disinterested. Mayor Lewis vs Ralph Nader, 1991.
[00:47:03] Speaker D: This is a real scenario.
I don't know if. Good Lord. Well, you know, what the fuck?
Ralph Nader at this point was an author. He had written the book Unsafe at Any Speed, which was about how they didn't put seat belts in cars.
And, and he had a real electoral. He had a real victory in the system, which qualifies you more than anyone in the green party in 30 or 40 years.
So I don't know. Do you feel like. No, no. Actually, Lewis would have won in a walk. America in 1991 was extremely libertarian leaning. Ross Perot got 30 to 40% of the vote for not doing anything. You're just saying we got to spend less money. All so I, I. That the 90s were more conservative than you think.
I think, yeah. Lewis gets this thing done.
[00:48:09] Speaker F: Yeah. That was incredible. I'm so glad I asked that. That was incredible, Brandon. I just. Wow.
[00:48:16] Speaker D: Honestly, it was. Honestly, that was a great prompt. You should have been here for the planning meeting.
We would have put that one right on the board. So you did it perfectly.
[00:48:28] Speaker E: All right. So Mayor Lewis is president. It's 1991. We're going with this one now because we just said it. He's president. It's 1991. He's got to fill his cabinet with members of Stardew Valley because those are his friends. Right. You know, it's just like how Trump picked his cabinet.
So we're gonna. We're gonna go through some cabinet positions. We're actually gonna go through all of them, because I think a lot of them are pretty obvious. And then there'll be a few we'll debate over.
So starting with the depart, we're gonna go in reverse of alphabetical order. So starting. I have a reason for this. We. Starting with the Department of Veteran Affairs. I think there's an obvious choice here.
[00:49:15] Speaker F: Clearly. Clearly, that's got to be Kent, right?
[00:49:19] Speaker E: Is there anyone else that even makes sense for this?
Maybe.
[00:49:23] Speaker F: You know what? Thus here, hear me out. You could make a case that Sam.
You could make a case for Kent.
[00:49:34] Speaker E: Yes.
[00:49:35] Speaker F: You could make a case for Kent being Secretary of Defense. And Sam, who, by the way, is Kent's son and was young when Kent went to war. Now Kent is back, and one of Kent's, like, NPC lines is that, like, he wishes he had been around to see Sam grow up and how he went away when he was a kid, and now he's a man. And one of Sam's NPC lines is that, like, his dad isn't the same.
Something about something like that. So I think you can make a case for Kent being Secretary of Defense and Sam seeing what the war has done to his dad, is the Veterans affairs person.
[00:50:26] Speaker E: Okay. Okay. You know what? What? That there's. There's an argument to be made there for Sam. You know what? I'm also going to throw out one more wild ball, but I think we might ultimately discount it because there's another place for him, which is Harvey, because Harvey is clearly a intelligence asset. Right. You agree with this theory?
[00:50:48] Speaker F: I accept it.
[00:50:49] Speaker E: He's always, like, doing that shady with the radio.
[00:50:53] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:50:54] Speaker E: What's up with that?
[00:50:56] Speaker B: What's up with that? What's up with Harvey?
[00:50:59] Speaker E: But I think we might. I think we'll find a better place for Harvey. So I. I actually kind of like Sam for this.
[00:51:05] Speaker F: Thank you. I thought. I argued that. Well, I thought, you know.
[00:51:09] Speaker E: All right, what about Department of the Treasury?
This one's a little tougher. I'm. I'm kind of. Honestly. Is it. Is it too much to say Haley here.
[00:51:20] Speaker F: You. Wow. Tell me why you gotta argue that one. Haley is like a Valley girl. And when literally, I mean, she's like, kind of mean, actually.
[00:51:32] Speaker E: Wait, we gotta go with Penny for this, because she also loved money and her name, Penny.
[00:51:37] Speaker F: And she grew up poor in a trailer like her. Like, she could be, like, arguing for it based on that. She's like a bootstrap, A rags to riches. Even though.
[00:51:50] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:50] Speaker F: Even though I spent $500,000 to build her house. That's fine.
[00:51:56] Speaker E: Department of Transportation. What's the name of the. The bus driver?
[00:52:01] Speaker F: Pam. Pam.
Penny's drunk, Mom.
[00:52:06] Speaker B: I have one concern.
No, wait a second.
[00:52:10] Speaker D: No.
[00:52:10] Speaker E: She's promised to quit drinking if she's appointed to the Department of Transportation.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: Wow, Kennedy, that sounds unrealistic. I'm glad that's never happened in real life.
[00:52:21] Speaker F: Hold on. She also promised to quit drinking after I built them a house. But then every night she's in the bar, like, incapacitated.
[00:52:30] Speaker D: So these people are a bunch of ingredients.
They're made for the government, it seems like they said they're laying around while you do the work, and nothing you do can change their behavior. So they're in the right business.
[00:52:44] Speaker E: Little bit. Little bit. Here's an important one. Department of State.
[00:52:49] Speaker F: Ooh, Department of State.
[00:52:51] Speaker E: Deanna, I really want you to make a good case here. Wait, actually, I do have a suggestion.
[00:52:56] Speaker F: If you're struggling, I'll hear a suggestion. I was formulating an argument for my idea, but.
[00:53:02] Speaker E: Well, tell me your idea.
[00:53:03] Speaker F: Well, tell me your suggestion.
[00:53:05] Speaker E: I was gonna say Mr. Keys. Bouncer.
[00:53:08] Speaker F: Wow.
No, there's no argument to be made for that.
[00:53:19] Speaker E: Maybe he makes more sense for Department.
[00:53:21] Speaker F: Of Justice Secretary of State. Honestly, I'm gonna go with Sandy.
[00:53:28] Speaker E: Sandy.
[00:53:29] Speaker F: Yeah. What?
[00:53:30] Speaker E: I could see that. Sandy. Yeah. All right, fine. We're going with Sandy because I like that.
[00:53:35] Speaker F: Do. Do Brandon and Andrew want or need to know who Sandy is?
[00:53:41] Speaker D: I know. I know. Sandy is a villager who runs a store.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: I know that she used to live in Texas and then she lived underwater.
[00:53:54] Speaker F: So funnily enough, Sandy does live in the desert. She lives alone in the fucking desert. Where there's also, like.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: Her name's Sandy because. Continue.
[00:54:06] Speaker F: I just feel like she's running a store out in the desert. She has, like, a little secret casino up top. Sandy has some stuff going on. I like. I like Sandy for it. She's well traveled, you know, that's legit.
[00:54:20] Speaker E: That's legit.
[00:54:21] Speaker F: Entrepreneurial.
[00:54:23] Speaker E: Yeah, entrepreneurial.
What about Department of Labor? I'm circling back to Gus for this one.
[00:54:31] Speaker F: I'm there with Gus. I. I like.
[00:54:34] Speaker E: He runs a bar.
He's a people person.
Actually bust a union.
[00:54:41] Speaker F: Actually, I might go back. Never mind. I was gonna say I might go back to Gus for Treasury, and I.
[00:54:49] Speaker E: Was still penny for treasury, for sure.
[00:54:52] Speaker F: And I was gonna say Clint. I could see Clint for labor.
[00:55:00] Speaker E: Clint's just not likable enough to be in the cabinet, I think.
[00:55:04] Speaker F: Yeah, that's true.
[00:55:06] Speaker E: And I think he's getting big time snubbed.
[00:55:10] Speaker F: And Clint has, like, a weird. He has a really weird vibe about Emily.
[00:55:16] Speaker E: Yeah. And we probably want Emily in the cabinet, so I have a specific place in mind for her.
[00:55:23] Speaker F: And he has a weird vibe about Sandy.
[00:55:26] Speaker E: Department of Justice. I think I'm bringing back Mr. Keys, bouncer. Once again.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: Once again, bringing up the bouncer.
[00:55:39] Speaker D: When you guys play this game because, you know, there's this whole gift system. Do you guys all look up whether they'll like the gifts or not or.
[00:55:50] Speaker E: I do.
[00:55:51] Speaker D: Deanna, are you. Are you looking up on a game facts like thing who's gonna like what?
[00:55:57] Speaker F: Not unless I have a specific objective where I would be trying to level someone's friendship really fast for a reason. Or if I up and gave them a gift that they disliked, I would want to be like 100 sure that the next gift I gave them was a like. And so I would check. But in the game, there are universal likes that you can give to everybody, and they'll like. They will like it at least. And then the foraged items tend to go over well or neutral with most of the characters. So. So generally, I don't set out with any plan of gifting. I just pick up whatever forageable items are around and then give those to vill. Who? Whoever I happen to encounter, whichever villagers I run into, whatever I have on me, I'm like, what up? This is for you. Now enjoy your salmonberry.
[00:57:06] Speaker E: Thanks.
That's.
[00:57:12] Speaker F: What are we on Justice?
[00:57:14] Speaker E: I'm still sticking with Mr. Keys, bouncer for Department of Justice.
[00:57:19] Speaker F: You know who I like for Department of Justice.
[00:57:22] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:57:22] Speaker F: Caroline.
[00:57:23] Speaker E: Caroline.
That's a wild take.
[00:57:29] Speaker F: I just. A lot of times. Okay, first of all, Caroline is married to Pierre, who is a piece of Pierre, and she manages that incredibly well.
[00:57:45] Speaker E: All right, fine. You know what? We're giving it to Caroline.
[00:57:48] Speaker F: Yes. Sometimes you just see her up by the community center chilling, and she's like, I'm just going to Zen out under this tree.
[00:57:55] Speaker E: Like, okay. I think this next one, though, is indisputable. Department of the Interior got to be the wizard, right?
[00:58:02] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:58:03] Speaker D: The interior department is not interior design. It is parks.
[00:58:10] Speaker E: Yeah. The wizard would be perfect for that.
[00:58:12] Speaker D: All right.
[00:58:13] Speaker F: Yeah. And the wizard has a special relationship with the forest creatures. The Junimos. Also can't.
[00:58:20] Speaker E: He lives outside of town. In the forest.
[00:58:23] Speaker F: Yeah. At one. At the summer luau. He's just like chilling out on a rock in the sea.
[00:58:29] Speaker E: He's basically a park ranger that also does trans reassignment in his basement. Low key.
[00:58:36] Speaker F: His wife. His ex wife. The witch helps.
[00:58:39] Speaker E: You mean his ex girlfriend Caroline. Or wait, hang on.
[00:58:43] Speaker F: Huh? Don't talk about that.
[00:58:45] Speaker E: Department of Housing and Urban Development. This has got to be Robin. Right?
[00:58:49] Speaker F: Yeah. Clearly.
[00:58:51] Speaker E: Okay. Health and Human Services. There wasn't Homeland security back in 1991.
[00:58:57] Speaker F: Health and Human Services.
I actually. No, no, no. I gotta go. Demetrius.
[00:59:06] Speaker E: Whoa.
Far out. But a good choice. He do be scientific now.
[00:59:12] Speaker F: Yes.
[00:59:13] Speaker E: For Department of Energy. We gotta go Emily. Because she's got the vibes. Right. For the Department of Energy.
[00:59:20] Speaker F: And that's what they do. Definitely.
[00:59:22] Speaker E: That's what they do at the Department of Energy is measure people's vibes and stuff like that.
[00:59:27] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:59:30] Speaker E: Department of Education.
This one's tricky.
[00:59:33] Speaker B: Do we have any wrestler characters? Anybody who owns wrestling entertainment? That's clearly the qualification.
A kid.
[00:59:43] Speaker F: Department of Education. Maru.
[00:59:46] Speaker E: Solid. All right. We saved Kent for Department of Defense.
[00:59:51] Speaker F: Yeah. But I could see it also being Marlin.
[00:59:56] Speaker B: I could see why you did it. Alphabetical order. By the way. Kennedy. I figured it out.
[01:00:02] Speaker E: True. Department of Commerce. I want to make the argument especially because we've already assigned Gus that this should maybe be Willie.
[01:00:13] Speaker F: You know what? I don't want drunk Pam driving the bus. Actually, I. I want Willie. I want Willie for Department of Transportation.
[01:00:25] Speaker E: We're going back. We're retroactively putting Willie for Department of Transportation. You know what? That he has a boat.
[01:00:33] Speaker F: Yeah. And we're on Commerce right now. And I have to give it to Pierre. I hate Pierre.
Pierre is such a. But he is the obvious choice.
[01:00:45] Speaker E: Yeah. I hate that. You're right. Although, wait. I've got a dark horse contender here. What about Krobus for Department of Commerce?
He is smart with money.
[01:00:59] Speaker D: Canonically, he's a slime monster. But that. That's never slapped any of the other people in that job.
[01:01:08] Speaker E: Yeah. Being a sewer dwelling creature is not disqualifying.
[01:01:15] Speaker F: You know.
[01:01:16] Speaker D: This is just a way to screw Pierre out of a job. I feel like.
[01:01:22] Speaker F: I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to say I like Krobus for it. However, 1991. To have Demetrius and Maru and Krobus. I think that's too Much diversity and inclusion for a libertarian in 1991.
[01:01:45] Speaker E: Good point, good point.
[01:01:47] Speaker D: They were letting 1991 libertarians get away with a lot of.
[01:01:52] Speaker E: Toughest one of all, arguably. Although I do think that there are a couple of front runners.
[01:01:58] Speaker D: Yeah, Department of Agriculture, King of all farmers.
[01:02:06] Speaker F: Department of Agriculture. I mean, our country is kind of in the business of, like, letting old people's ghosts hold office.
So Grandpa's ghosts could be up there.
[01:02:24] Speaker E: Obviously, Marnie's a front runner.
[01:02:27] Speaker F: Marnie for sure.
You could make the argument that your own self, the farmer who saved the town, should be running the Department of Agriculture.
[01:02:42] Speaker D: That's a great answer. I like the player character, the dopa, the arbiter.
[01:02:48] Speaker F: Wait, however.
Oh, my player character is currently a millionaire. Many, many multi.
[01:03:01] Speaker E: That's not disqualifying.
[01:03:03] Speaker F: But I'm on my farm. I just. I feel like my player character is moisturized. It's staying in its own lane. It does not need to be in charge of anything. You have come, you have thrived, you have made your social contribution. Why do you need to see your name in lights? Take your millions of dollars off to Ginger island, hang out at the resort, go back to your main farm, kiss your wife that you ignore, do. Do whatever you do. Continue to date all 10 people that are single in the town.
[01:03:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That would be kind of disqualifying back then.
[01:03:41] Speaker F: And just, just. I just feel like at that point, Stay in your. Stay in your lane, you know?
[01:03:47] Speaker E: You know what we didn't consider for Department of the Interior, Professor Snail.
[01:03:58] Speaker F: Professor Snail is Stardew Valley's equivalent of rfk.
[01:04:04] Speaker E: And we agreed this guy's a libertarian, so actually we're kicking out the wizard who's pro trans. Canonically.
[01:04:10] Speaker F: I think the wizard. They would have tried to appoint the wizard and the wizard would have set decline also.
[01:04:20] Speaker E: I. I just feel like those confirmation hearings with the wizard would have been dreadful. Not. That wouldn't have gone well.
[01:04:27] Speaker F: No, not at all.
[01:04:29] Speaker E: No one needs to find out who Abigail's real father is in a Senate hearing.
[01:04:34] Speaker F: Yeah, I.
Yeah, I. I think I agree. I agree with that. I support.
[01:04:42] Speaker E: So Department of Agriculture, though. Are we sticking with the player? Are we going with something? Are we going with, I think, Grandpa's ghost?
[01:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[01:04:52] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:04:53] Speaker E: I love the player as an answer. It was poetic. But then you talked me back out of it, so now I'm back to. Although I like Marnie for it. I think Marnie would get snubbed in favor of Grandpa's ghost.
[01:05:06] Speaker F: I think Marnie would dis I think Barney deserves it 100%, much like actual. Again, much like our actual government.
Marnie could invite the potential of scandal for incumbent President Lewis, and I think for that reason he will discount her from the cabinet. He would rather appoint a dead man's ghost.
Yeah, be like that.
[01:05:38] Speaker E: To be like that.
[01:05:39] Speaker D: Yeah, that's hilarious. I like that.
[01:05:41] Speaker E: Well, thank you for participating in the main portion of our show. To round the show out, I've got a couple more slightly quirkier questions to finish things off here.
First of all, we talked about some political candidates early in the show who didn't make it in their desired elections. Yeah.
Now we also talked about the need for an election in Stardew Valley.
Mayor Lewis is finally being challenged in an election in Stardew Valley in Pelican Town.
Who could win the election for Pelican Town in the race between Mayor Lewis and William Jennings Bryan, the guy whose agricultural policies crashed economies?
[01:06:36] Speaker D: There's no way William J. He's way too turnt up. That's an American. I. That's an American guy. Very quintessentially. You send him to a sleepy farm town, you know, farming. Although farmers were very turned up in the 1920s or whatever. But I know he's from. From before that, but you know, farmers were way turned up back then, but Stardew Valley farmers, not so much. They're gonna think this guy's doing too much.
[01:07:06] Speaker E: What about. Go ahead, Deanna.
[01:07:08] Speaker F: Wait, I mean, the player character is actually the only farmer in Stardew Valley.
[01:07:16] Speaker E: Well, Marnie.
[01:07:18] Speaker F: Yeah, she. She doesn't do crops though.
Just livestock farming, which is also farming either way. I'm just saying it's not a town made up of farmers. It is a town with one farm.
So they might be a little bit more. Some of them might be more in for the turn up than you would imagine.
[01:07:43] Speaker E: You know, that's a good point.
[01:07:47] Speaker F: Like there's 12 people that live there and eight of them are at the bar every night. They are trying to turn up.
[01:07:55] Speaker E: Those numbers aren't quite right, but that was pretty accurate. Yeah, I was just.
[01:08:00] Speaker F: I was just throwing them out.
[01:08:01] Speaker E: Okay, we don't do math. Hey, well, you do math.
[01:08:08] Speaker D: We do so little math that we outsource the math to someone else.
[01:08:14] Speaker E: I still.
[01:08:15] Speaker D: You do math so we don't have to.
[01:08:17] Speaker E: I think Mayor Lewis could retain against William Jennings Brian.
[01:08:22] Speaker F: I think he loses it to Dan Osborne, though.
[01:08:25] Speaker E: I was about to say, okay, Dan Osborne was our other.
[01:08:28] Speaker B: Was our other thing. I think he would actually beat Dan Osborne because Dan Osborne's whole thing was these politicians don't do what you want them to do. But we've been talking about Lewis just being cool and casual. He'd be like, he'd be like, hey, we have to fight these politicians. They're cool and casual.
[01:08:49] Speaker E: But I still feel like the attitude around town is that that change might be. Need to happen.
[01:08:57] Speaker B: Okay, then maybe, maybe Dan Osborne.
[01:09:01] Speaker E: I think there are a lot of people that are sick of Mayor Lewis in Pelican Town.
[01:09:06] Speaker F: I think it depends what's going on. I would need more information about the war.
[01:09:13] Speaker B: Oh, wait, Osborne was in the.
I forget which branch for Osborne knows war veteran.
[01:09:23] Speaker E: Of the Paul. Of the real life politicians that we've mentioned today. Any, any politician that we've mentioned today that you can remember which one would do the best to restore the honor of grandpa's farm.
[01:09:37] Speaker D: Just the phrase restore, honor. You've got a whole. You've got a whole pause. A chill settles on to the room. Restore. Who's restoring? Anyone who's restored anyone's honor in American history. I don't know.
[01:09:55] Speaker E: Keep in mind though, they don't need to restore the honor of a country here. They just simply need to fix grandpa's farm up enough that, that, that, that grandpa's proud after three years. And I just want to throw it out there as much as I give this man for a lot of things. I think Jimmy Carter. Oh yeah, in three years could fix up grandpa's farm enough that grandpa's ghost would come back and say, you did it, Jimmy.
[01:10:20] Speaker F: You know who else I think could do it? Ross Perot.
[01:10:27] Speaker E: I got another one. Actually. You know who else could do it that we mentioned today? Ralph Nader.
I think Ralph Nader could restore grandpa's farm.
Brandon, come on, you can't dispute. I know you were being cynical, but come on, you gotta admit, if Rat you gave Ralph Nader grandpa's farm in three years.
[01:10:47] Speaker D: Yeah, but also you remember our earlier episode about Star wars and this isn't a formal rule, but I just don't consider you a politician in these things unless you've won an office. Has Ralph Nader, is he. Would he win a school board or anything?
[01:11:07] Speaker E: Some kind of office? Right.
[01:11:09] Speaker D: Has he ever won an election?
[01:11:12] Speaker F: Let's you know.
[01:11:13] Speaker D: And if not, I don't know.
I'd say he's above being a politician. He tried but didn't do it.
I think Obama would probably do this just because that's a guy that is the perfect demographic for Stardew Valley. He'd understand all of that stuff. I don't know how much. I think he'd do a bare minimum of. Of real farming, but I think he'd do enough social manipulation.
I don't know.
[01:11:48] Speaker E: So you have to do a little of both, though, to succeed in Pelican Town.
[01:11:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
So Obama's my choice. Good, well rounded choice for any of these challenges, honestly.
[01:12:01] Speaker E: Yeah, I feel like. I feel like you could just say Obama for like, any of these questions I throw at the end. And there's like a. There's like a good chance that we'll buy it.
[01:12:10] Speaker D: I can bring Shadow the Hedgehog back to the good side. Shadow, I know there's a lot of darkness inside of your heart. You've been through so many things. Yeah. All that stuff.
[01:12:21] Speaker B: Maria, I promise to change for Obama.
[01:12:25] Speaker F: All right, Bad news, as it turns out. I don't think I, I just took a. I just took a little quick looksy here, and it does not seem that Ralph Nader ever held an office.
[01:12:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I was looking into that too. I know he kept running for president.
[01:12:49] Speaker E: Well, Dan Osborne could restore the farm. I know he hasn't held an office yet, but I, I still want to give it to him as well.
[01:12:56] Speaker B: I mean, he's been a union leader.
[01:12:57] Speaker D: There's probably a lot of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tim Wallace. Yeah, there are probably people from that. You think Amy Klobuchar could restore the honor of a farm?
[01:13:13] Speaker E: I don't know. We come up with some more Midwestern folks though, for sure. But I think that's a good enough note to leave it on.
[01:13:21] Speaker F: Yeah, for sure.
[01:13:23] Speaker E: We've got. We've got Jimmy Carter for sure. He could win Stardew Valley.
[01:13:31] Speaker F: We.
[01:13:32] Speaker E: We might give him shit for things that he did, meddling in other countries that led to literally being.
[01:13:39] Speaker B: Carter is responsible for the war.
[01:13:43] Speaker E: But, yeah, he's responsible for the mysterious war in Stardew Valley.
The unspecified mysterious war. Jimmy Carter started that. But still, he could restore the honor of Grandpa's farm. Probably better than any other politician, living or dead, that we could. We could come up with, I think. And we've come up with a couple other really good runner ups as well. Deanna, thank you so much for voting with us today, doing your civic duty. It's the most important election of our lives once again. But we have done it. We have completed it.
Do you want to promote anything? There's always that show that we're on, I guess.
[01:14:26] Speaker F: If you thought that anything I said today was funny, you can go listen to the podcast. I'm on all the time. It's called Worst Week, yet you can find it wherever you find podcasts.
If there's someone you don't like, definitely recommend it to them.
[01:14:41] Speaker E: And until next time, keep on voting.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: Ghost Coast Studios. Thanks for listening.
